


Last Will and Testament of a friendship

by Ruta



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Awesome Mary Morstan, BAMF Molly Hooper, Comfort/Angst, F/M, Female Friendship, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 18:41:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9780146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: "I'm sorry." Sherlock traces the edges of her face with his thumb, he seems genuinely sorry. "I should have noticed before." He speaks in a voice hoarse from pain and Molly let that pain - not her own, and yet so similar - envelop her. "She was your John Watson.""No," a real, sincere whisper, "she was my Mary."





	

"I should have noticed."

The sudden noise makes Molly jump. In the jolt one of the Tesco eco-friendly bags gets out of her grip, falling. Part of the weekly shop rolls out. Canned food, frozen food, milk and a pack of Jammie Dodgers.

She sighs with relief - _no damage, nothing broken_ \- before glaring at the man who occupies one of the armchairs, the Belstaff tight around his slender body like Linus' security blanket and a gray cat curled up in his lap.

"Sherlock." She frowns and begins to collect the purchases scattered on the floor.

She doesn’t ask how he got in - not because he would not be able to enter by forcing the door or picking the lock (in the past, as a challenge, he gave her a demonstration in the exhibitionistic and blatant way that is typical of him, just to confirm one of his thesis), but for the simple, indisputable fact that are years that Sherlock has his own set of keys, just as she has a copy of the 221B's.

"What did you mean?" Kneeling on the floor, Molly continues to arrange the purchases in the bag with placid movements and a seraphic expression.

A can of peas, one of beans, and so on, in a rapid and mechanical succession of entirely equal gestures. Part of her, the one exhausted who crave for a warm bath and a frugal dinner (get rid of the smell of death, fill a little the sense of emptiness that is tearing her apart more and more often lately), part of her would have preferred to put the question differently, with less kind words. Despite the gnawing fatigue, Molly swallows as a bitter pill the rebuke that sizzles on the tip of her tongue, the curse that has almost surfaced to her lips. Sherlock’s inappropriate timing is the proverbial straw that could break the camel’s back.

"It was you." His voice is dangerously low, a soft murmur in the semi-darkness of the apartment. Sherlock is only a shadow with sharp contours, a ghost in black and white against a seabed nightmare and Molly calls herself silly for not have turned on the lights. As if reading her mind, he extends his free hand toward the lamp on the table while the other continues to scratch Toby idly behind the ears with those pale fingers of a musician.

"Is it really necessary that you do so?" Contrary to all her previous intentions, Molly betrays the discomfort she feels. "Stop talking in riddles. Spit it out."

She straightens her shoulders and gives him a stern look. Not that she really thinks that it is enough to convince him to get to the point. Sherlock loves theatrics, ostentation, the digressions, although he likes to believe that he is inscrutable and dark like a secret perpetrated in the heart of a night of midwinter. On a different day, Molly would indulge his whims as she has already done in the past, but tonight she is too tired to support the weight of a serious conversation, let alone that of a serious conversation with Sherlock Holmes.

He says nothing. However he touches the inside of his coat. When she sees him pull out from a pocket an envelope already open, holding it between the index and middle fingers so that she can watch its back, Molly has to use every ounce of her will to keep her face carefully expressionless or not lower her eyes in an unequivocal admission of guilt.

"A letter." She tries to use a lighter tone, but his piercing gaze - unusually tough - makes clear to her as any attempt or resistance is futile. Molly strokes with her fingertips yet another jar, without grasping it. She sighs and this time, unlike the first, the sound is not exasperated, but is someway exhausted, defeated. "What do you want me to say?" She questions, rejecting altogether the desire to wipe her eyes to dispel the anguish and the bitterness, the helplessness and the inevitable sadness.

"The truth," he says without hesitation.

"The truth," she repeats with a querulous laugh and rubs with a knuckle her lower lip as to erase from her mouth the flavor of that nervous laugh.

The harsh and glowing mass in the bottom of Sherlock eyes becomes less murky, as if catching her confusion he had decided to lighten the tone.

"Did you really think that I would not notice?" The accusation is obvious, but it is masked by a plucked note of curiosity.

"You haven’t noticed until now," Molly points out. "I don’t blame you," she continues with a smile to which he reacts with a frown. "You have been kept busy by more important things." She doesn't specify what these 'more important things' are; it is not necessary: a death, another rehabilitation and detoxification from drugs, the row and the reconciliation with John and all the sensational mess caused by Euros.

"I do not want to know _how_ ," he clarifies, irascible as every time he feels the approach of a case solution, as every time he faces the darkest hour, the one that precedes the dawn. "I want to know _why_."

"Deduct it, Sherlock. Why do you think we did it? You already know the answer."

"I may have understood Mary’s reasons," he grants, accompanying every phrase with a haughty gesture of the hand. "The love for her husband and her daughter, of course. The desire to know both of them safe - "

"And for you," Molly interrupts him.

In front of his sullen silence, she licks her lips. The memories crowd painfully behind her half-closed eyelids: a flash of blond and wavy hair; deep eyes, immense as the treasures hidden in the depths of the sea in every self-respecting pirate story; laughter, enough to warrant every tear.

"And for you, Sherlock," she says softly. "The love for _you_. The desire to protect _you_."

For a moment, the refraction of an emotion, soft and fragile and latent, is revealed in Sherlock’s marble profile, but then the moment passes and any trace of vulnerability dissolve, a dream that vanishes in the awakening of logic and dismisses the echo of a heartbeat caught in flagrante.

"My reasons are mine," she says, unable to look away, even though she knows she has just witnessed something intimate, private, rare. _It is not the first time_. "They are mine alone."

Sherlock's lips arching in a wry smile. "They are a secret?"

Molly doesn't let the provocation hurt her. She shrugs, clenching her hands above her knee. "Nothing really worth all this trouble."

"Let me be the judge of that."

Out of the corner of the eye she sees him take Toby in his arms and stand up with a feline snap, move closer and sit in front of her. Toby meows, clearly upset by the change of position and instinctively she leans forward and strokes him, tracing with the palm his spine. Somewhere above her bowed head, Sherlock Holmes looks at her and the weight of that stare is wedged in the back of her head as a bait attached to the hook.

"What are you hiding, Molly?"

Fatigue takes over, makes her talk. She shakes her head slowly and ends of the hair brush the throat and sides of her neck. (She still has to get used to the new cut. Impulsive action, born from an unreasonable thought. She wanted a visible change, something that would witness the intangible happened inside her after Mary’s loss.)  

"Nothing you don’t already know or that you are willing to hear."

He exhales deeply, but doesn’t say a word. He takes her hand, but doesn’t intertwine with his, resting it above hers. Molly observes them, fascinated: two hands so different in size and extent and bone structure and yet, so juxtaposed to each other, seem to acquire their reason for being.

"Why did you not tell me? Why did you leave me to find out?"

Molly relishes the note of uncertainty and confusion in his voice. "What would you have preferred?" She raises her head and crosses his gaze firmly. "You made a vow. I made a promise."

Sherlock looks at her a long time without flinching before nodding, a single, fluid nod. "I see. I suppose that there was a _terminus ante quem_. You had to wait for it before delivering the envelope."

Molly fakes a smile, the longing sharp and piercing like a thick, the sense of guilt squeezing.

"I'm sorry." Sherlock traces the edges of her face with his thumb, he seems genuinely sorry. "I should have noticed before." He speaks in a voice hoarse from pain and Molly let that pain - not her own, and yet so similar - envelop her. "She was your John Watson."

"No." She shuts her eyes.  _[A remembrance. "I know I'm asking you a lot, Molly, but there's no one else I trust more." Remorse carved in Mary’s expression when, after recording the video, she had given her the sealed envelope; in the back of her throat the echo of the cry that she hasn’t granted herself. "I know I'm asking you the impossible and I am so sorry, I truly am -"]_

"No," a real, sincere whisper of grief, "she was my Mary."

**Author's Note:**

> The idea that Mary was 'helped' in the making of the video was something that I had already considered and on which I had pondered and built conjectures. Then, reviewing the end of the first episode, the clues stuck to perfection. The rolling shutters, or rather the close-up of the shutters, were the keystone. The shutters behind Mary in the video, the close-up of the apartment's shutters when Sherlock goes to see Molly, and there's the heartbreaking scene where she gives him John’s letter (I checked and the shutters are not present in Watson’s house, John also says clearly that Rosamund is at a friend’s house, therefore: Molly, Molly's house, Molly’s shutters. Bingo!).  
> Although brilliant and witty and insightful, I do not think that Mary had really worked out a long-term plan that involved sending that video to Sherlock in case of her death. To me it does make much more sense that she has briefed Molly, has recorded the video in her flat (without the possibility that someone like John or Sherlock could disturb her) and has asked her to send it in the eventuality that something happened to her. The idea is so tragically beautiful and disturbing that it breaks my heart, especially because I really wanted that they shown us something more of their interactions. What do you think? It’s the deemed nonsense of a crazy or you are with me on the yellow brick road leading to Oz? :D


End file.
